Cars have long been marketed featuring a sun roof, which can be set to a closed position entirely covering the passenger compartment for use in bad and/or cold weather, and an open position in which the passenger compartment is exposed.
A sun roof of the type described above may be made of flexible canvas to fold into the open position. Though cheap and easy to produce, a canvas sun roof has several drawbacks: the canvas tends to age fairly quickly, especially when exposed to weather, thus resulting in a fairly short working life of the sun roof; soundproofing is poor, and the sun roof tends to vibrate noisily when the car is travelling at fairly high speed, so that the passenger compartment is noisy even when the roof is closed; and, finally, security is poor, in that a canvas sun roof can be cut simply using a knife, for illegal access to the interior of the car.
For all the above reasons, recent car models feature a rigid sun roof, which normally comprises two or more rigid roof members hinged to each other and which collapse one on top of the other into the open position. One proposal, for example, comprises a first rigid roof member defining the roof and top of the passenger compartment; and a second rigid roof member which is hinged to the first, incorporates a transparent rear window, and defines the rear of the passenger compartment.
In the collapsed position, known rigid sun roofs of the above type are bulky, and so call for a large sun roof housing at the rear of the car. The large size of the roof housing seriously reduces the loading space in the boot of front-engine cars, and even prevents adoption of this solution in the case of central- or rear-engine cars.